Here We Go Again

This is why we need a revised Bill of Rights. I’m not talking about gun laws, and I’m not talking about gay marriage (or as some of us like to call it, marriage), I’m talking about our digital rights and issues of privacy and dignity in the face of government snooping.

The U.K. has announced plans to begin a wide-reaching surveillance program that would essentially force ISPs to keep track of the email and browsing habits of the U.K.’s over 62 million residents. Lawmakers say such drastic measures are necessary to combat terrorism, but opponents to the proposal (people who possess a brain stem) say it has far more sinister implications.

Okay, I’ll can the faux-news reporting bit and get right to it.

Can these guys really be this shameless? It simply boggles the mind that they would propose these sorts of things, tell us it’s for our own good, and expect us not to remember the TSA, the PATRIOT ACT, SOPA, PIPA, or all of the other surveillance, anti-piracy, and anti-terrorism crap that’s been thrown our way. And let’s not just brush this one aside since it’s coming from our neighbors across the pond, okay? These guys in government are all one in the same – they see a good idea from some other country where they can get the people to willingly hand over information about their private lives, and they enact some shoddy, discount, domestic version of it.

Here’s the thing about this sort of legislation that the politicians won’t tell you – it’s unnecessary. That’s the one big argument against this sort of stuff that everyone seems to forget. Yes, we deserve our privacy, and we deserve to not have our (collective) governments up our asses; however, not only are these programs a gross invasion of the public, but they are also wholly ineffective. Think about how much information the U.K. Government is asking for. Think of the amount of time and money that is to be spent sifting through this information, and think about how very little will actually come of it. They’re using the shotgun approach to a problem that requires a sharpshooter.

But then again, if they’d simply improve foreign relations and quit pissing people off to the point where they want to kill us, maybe then they wouldn’t have to spy on their own citizens, now, would they?

Oh, what’s that, peasant? I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you over all of the money I’m getting in campaign finance from the military-industry and the oil companies.